What is your real TDEE?
Four weeks of what you ate and what you weighed show what you really burn.
How it works
If your weight held steady, you ate your maintenance. If it moved, the move tells you how far off you were. A pound of weight is counted as 3,500 calories, so losing a pound a week on 2,000 a day means you burn about 2,500.
The line through your morning weights gives the trend, so one salty dinner or a big glass of water doesn't swing it. Your maintenance is your average intake minus that trend in calories. Your usual workouts are already in it, so don't add your watch's exercise calories on top.
Logs tend to run low. In a 1992 study, ten people who said they couldn't lose weight on under 1,200 calories a day had under-reported what they ate by 47%. Log everything for the four weeks, the bites and drinks too, and this number is yours.
2 sources
- Lichtman SW, Pisarska K, Berman ER, et al. Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects. New England Journal of Medicine, 1992nejm.org
- Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
